[Illustration:  LINCOLN SPLITTING LOGS FOR RAILS.]

[Footnote 5:  Illinois:  he moved to a farm on the North Fork (or branch) of the Sangamon River, Macon County, Illinois.  Springfield, the capital of the state, is in the next county west.]

[Footnote 6:  Clearing:  an open space made in a forest.]

[Footnote 7:  Tow cloth:  a kind of coarse, cheap, but very strong cloth, made of flax or hemp.]

251.  Lincoln hires out to tend store; the gang of ruffians in New Salem; Jack Armstrong and “Tall Abe.”—­The year after young Lincoln came of age he hired out to tend a grocery and variety store in New Salem, Illinois.[8] There was a gang of young ruffians in that neighborhood who made it a point to pick a fight with every stranger.  Sometimes they mauled him black and blue; sometimes they amused themselves with nailing him up in a hogshead and rolling him down a hill.  The leader of this gang was a fellow named Jack Armstrong.  He made up his mind that he would try his hand on “Tall Abe,” as Lincoln was called.  He attacked Lincoln, and he was so astonished at what happened to him that he never wanted to try it again.  From that time Abraham Lincoln had no better friends than young Armstrong and the Armstrong family.  Later on we shall see what he was able to do for them.

[Footnote 8:  New Salem is on the Sangamon River, in Menard County, about twenty miles northwest of Springfield, the capital of Illinois.]

252.  Lincoln’s faithfulness in little things; the six cents; “Honest Abe.”—­In his work in the store Lincoln soon won everybody’s respect and confidence.  He was faithful in little things, and in that way he made himself able to deal with great ones.

Once a woman made a mistake in paying for something she had bought, and gave the young man six cents too much.  He did not notice it at the time, but after his customer had gone he saw that she had overpaid him.  That night, after the store was closed, Lincoln walked to the woman’s house, some five or six miles out of the village, and paid her back the six cents.  It was such things as this that first made the people give him the name of “Honest Abe.”

253.  The Black Hawk War; the Indian’s handful of dry leaves; what Lincoln did in the war.—­The next year Lincoln went to fight the Indians in what was called the Black Hawk War.  The people in that part of the country had been expecting the war; for, some time before, an Indian had walked up to a settler’s cabin and said, “Too much white man.”  He then threw a handful of dry leaves into the air, to show how he and his warriors were coming to scatter the white men.  He never came, but a noted chief named Black Hawk, who had been a friend of Tecumseh’s,[9] made an attempt to drive out the settlers, and get back the lands which certain Indians had sold them.

Lincoln said that the only battles he fought in this war were with the mosquitoes.  He never killed a single Indian, but he saved the life of one old savage.  He seems to have felt just as well satisfied with himself for doing that as though he had shot him through the head.